


Wanting

by edmstuck (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Sadstuck, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/edmstuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The main and really only difference between the red and black quadrants is more simple than anyone thinks at first: loving is wanting. Hating is needing. You wish you didn't know that, but you do, and it sucks to have such firsthand experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Davekat fic contest on tumblr (located on the ss-davekat blog.) I'm entering the short category; the prompt is "I live near the / slaughterhouse / and am ill / with thriving."

He purrs when you pay just the right amount of attention to him.

But it's not just that, and it's not just purring. It's a growling-clicking-rumbling crackle deep in his throat that shoots adrenaline like fire straight through your veins. It goads you on, makes you tempt him to be more vocal and be louder - because you love his noises, as dangerous and as demanding as they can be. Your voice whispers in the silence you dislike more than anything else. _Come on, Karkitty. Purr for me. Tell me what you think._ And he does.

He's not shy about his claws.

They aren't like a cat's claws, either (though you wish they were sometimes.) They're talon-like, cutting deep into your skin, scraping rough against smooth, bruising your flesh red and purple and yellow. It hurts the next day, but you view the marks as battle wounds that are worth the struggle. He glares when you keep from wearing a shirt just to show them off. He says you have no shame, it's embarrassing. You say that he can get his head out of his ass and that you look fucking awesome. He threatens to dig deeper next time. You give him a look, shrug, and tell him to bring it on.

He hates your shades.

He hates you too, but he's almost always infuriated with your glasses, taking every chance he can to knock them off or steal them. This irritates you more than you would like to let on, but you fuck up one time and tell him to go to hell and find his own shitty shades if he's going to keep taking yours. He turns on his heel and leaves you on the couch, alone, before returning and tossing your shades onto the couch next to you. You get a quick glimpse of his back as he leaves again and you decide you forgive him as your heart does that stupid thing where it skips a beat.

He's got the best expressions.

When you two are alone and he really lets go of whatever's holding him back, his responses are probably the greatest thing you've ever seen. Eyes clenched tight, mouth parted just so, too-sharp teeth worrying at that bottom lip. It's beautiful, and worthy of a photograph. That is, if he'd even let you take one (which is a no.) Sometimes, when you coax him to, he'll open his eyes with the widest look, panting in time with your rhythm. And sometimes, it feels like maybe he doesn't hate you so much. Maybe he could love you back, even just pity would be okay. Maybe he could stop with this stupid kismesis shit. But then his fingers clutch at your hair again and he shuts his eyes back tight and you have to swallow that little feeling that you refuse to call regret.

He's a cuddler.

He won't admit it, ever, but it's enough that you know. You're the only person who does know, really, aside from his moirail. After everything's said and done, he needs to be reassured and needs to have some time to put up those walls again, the walls that you try so hard to tear down, the walls that keep you out and keep him in. When the faded light falls on his cheek and you see the faint glimmer of an eye staring at you, you almost say something. You get so close to telling him that you don't hate him and you're in actual pain knowing he hates you. Telling him how you don't want his hate, you want his love, his pity, his body curving perfectly against yours all the time. Making him realize your heart beats for him and you'd drop dead on the spot if it'd make him love you back. But you never say a thing, because you can't get up the courage to do it.

He hates you.

And you play along, making him think you hate him back, even though you don't. You could never feel anything but love for him, with how much you've watched, how much you know him inside and out. If someone asked you what he does in his free time, you could give them endless lists upon lists of various hobbies and habits he has. How he does this stupid little head twitch to get his too-long mess of hair out of his face. How he studies his hands and stubbornly refuses to ever crack his knuckles. He types precisely and if he messes up or typos, immediately keysmashes and re-writes the entire message. You wouldn't hesitate for a second to tell him how you feel, if you didn't know he would feel cornered and break all ties with you. Being around him, hating you or not, is better than that, you tell yourself constantly. Better than being without.

You love him enough to push all of your feelings down, suppress them, tear your heart into pieces and put it back together later when you're alone, as long as it means he doesn't hate you enough to block you out for good.

You have to convince yourself of this with every contact, every kiss, every touch with him. You love him. You love him and it hurts, it hurts too much, so much, all the time, knowing he doesn't feel the same, and in fact, feels the exact opposite. Sometimes you try to persuade yourself into thinking that he could love you. He could be using the same ruse as you, how the hell would you know?

You would know, though. You know everything he tries to hide, because he's shit at it. His face is too expressive, body too responsive. When you walk past, his shoulders tense, his lips curve into the most sorry excuse for a snarl you've ever seen, and he pauses in whatever he's doing. Later, that same snarl could be attempting to appear when you trail your lips across his skin, and you say things he'd never let you get away with if you weren't both in need of touch.

_You're perfect, fuck, I want you to be mine forever._

_Fuck you, you're lying, that's so sappy, you're an asshole, shut the fuck up._

_It takes one to know one._

The back and forth argument could continue for a while before one of you gets too fed up and just meets the other's reply with their lips and it turns into who-can-kiss-without-stopping-for-breath-the-longest. You let him win sometimes. He brags about it for days afterward, until you challenge him to a rematch, which he gladly obliges. More often than not, it ends with Karkat trying to keep quiet as you work your magic, or you on the floor and him working his.

Sometimes you need someone to put you in your place. (You want that someone to be Karkat, all the time, every time, constantly, with you wherever you are, holding you, kissing you, loving you.)

You want a lot of things that have no chance of happening, as is more than obvious by this point.

Karkat hates you, and he says so all the time, and you're always glad for your shades, because he can't see that pain flicker in your eyes. You shouldn't be so hurt, though. You're too cool to pine after someone as stupid as him. That train of thought is just another ploy to try and get you to tell yourself that you need to man up and deal with this.

Yet you continue pining.

In those rare moments where the two of you are quiet together and there's no banter or moving or really even anything, you wonder if you could pick a good time to tell him. Maybe he wouldn't flip his shit if you timed it perfectly, without a flaw. Maybe if you could convince him, he'd realize it wasn't such a bad thing, and you could even be blessed by whatever cruel god there is for once and he'd feel the same way. Thinking about these things helped until he was gone again, and then you just hurt worse than before.

You were no stranger to hiding things. Shades were kept on for a reason, careful poker face always present. You were raised to be stronger, to not show any emotion that could be used against you. Thinking about your feelings for Karkat as a strife made things somewhat easier to deal with. Parry when you're getting an especially upsetting idea, strafe when you need to avoid a tempting situation to share that weakness.

Unfortunately, there's also a point where you can keep quiet no longer, and you hit your limit eventually.

After you’ve wrestled your way to top, you soothe his spirit with a bite to his neck, a lick and then a command. _Let me have my way with you, Vantas._ He only obliges once you cover his mouth with yours, hands pinning his arms to his sides as he growls that low growl that’s too many sounds in one. You press another, more gentle than usual kiss against his lips as he breathes, lines of curses flowing freely from his mouth as you move your attention back to his neck, then pausing before you murmur against his skin.

_I love you._

He stops moving, stops breathing. You think you might die where you sit atop of him, face flushed with effort and nerves. When he speaks after a moment of heavy silence, his voice is laced with disbelief.

_What?_

You swallow, mouth dryer than a desert now.

_You heard me, Vantas. I love you. I love you more than you hate me or say you hate me and it hurts like a bullet through the heart every time I realize you don't love me back. I love you so much it feels like you're tearing into my head every time you talk, every single fucking thing you say. I'm not a liar, not about this shit. So don't even tell me I'm lying or messing with you right now because if you do I swear I'll just._

And you stop to breathe because you feel like you're suffocating in a vaccuum and you can't feel your lungs, you can't feel your heart.

_I'll just pick up whatever shitty scraps of my pride's left after I spill my guts to you. And I won't tell anyone. And you can ignore me from now on or whatever shit you wanna do and it's totally fine, I'll be fine, you'll have an extra quadrant free and it won't be filled by a human, what a fan-fucking-tastic bonus, right?_

It's only when you realize you're shaking that you get off of him, chancing a quick look to his face. He doesn't say a word, never says anything, just staring at you with those wide, yellow eyes. You aren't surprised by his reaction, having played through this in your head so many times, too many times. So you leave. You wave in a deceitfully offhanded manner at his completely stunned expression, heart breaking with every step you take. You won't turn back, though - because after that nice little feelings vomit, you owe him a clean break.

You'd heard the term 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' before. You'd never fully understood it until now. Being with Karkat, whether he hated you or not, at least he accepted you. Wanted you (but not in the way you wished.) He needed you too, the way you touched him, the way you ignored all his flaws and played on them in mock-hate. He needed the way you could make him feel, just like you wanted him to make you feel, but in an entirely different way.

The main and really only difference between the red and black quadrants is more simple than anyone thinks at first: loving is wanting. Hating is needing. You wish you didn't know that, but you do, and it sucks to have such firsthand experience.

You thought you couldn't feel any worse than being near him and knowing he hated you. You thought it would be better if it was put to an end, for you to get over your feelings without being tempted with his touch, his attentions. You were wrong, dead fucking wrong. It was so much better to stay where you shouldn't, to wreck yourself while believing you were doing something perfect and at the same time, being with Karkat, however fucked up it was. You love him and all you want is to be near him - and now, you can't even do that.

You want to be ill with thriving again.


	2. Reciprocate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat's perspective of things that occurred in chapter one, and a conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short because i rushed it to get it done before the deadline - i just wanted closure ;;

With every touch, he makes a sound.

He tries not to. You can tell. He likes being quiet and making you work for it, and you hate him for it. You hate him for forcing you to move, forcing you to have to try to get him to react. He smirks that insufferable way and you growl low in your throat. It's like a chain reaction. You initiate, he pushes you to try harder, and you do. You do and he loves it, begs for it, even when he's the one controlling. You always make him fight for that control, though. Always.

He doesn't enjoy it when you aren't reacting at all.

It's true, you get into your moods sometimes where even as pitch as you feel towards him, you won't acknowledge his existence. For some reason, he always attempts to cheer you up, get you to at least frown in annoyance at his actions. Once, while you were arguing over something stupid, he took off his shades after you began ignoring him, and you stared, taken aback by this. He just stared right back at you, at your eyes, gaze ghosting over your form before he replaced his shades and left. You followed him with your look as his figure disappeared down the hall, a hollow feeling pooling in the pit of your stomach.

He smiles every once in a while.

You find yourself paying closer and closer attention to every detail about him as the time goes on. If you don't immediately turn him away, there's a flash of an almost-smile that appears for a second on his face, and then is gone, as if he doesn't want you to know. Sometimes you'll lay beside him with half-shut eyes after an especially arduous time and you'll secretly watch, watch as his gaze falls across your face and his eyes sweep your features. You find it hypnotizing in a strange way, that your kismesis who is supposed to hate you instead enjoys just soaking up your relaxed expression. You didn't spend time thinking on it, however, forcing it out of your mind.

He makes it difficult sometimes.

Hating him, you mean. Dave Strider is a mystifying human under his many layers that he calls irony. In reality, you think you're the only one who's seen him without that facade of smoothness. He's not really all that smooth at all, not cool nor any other sort of synonym. He's just Dave, and he tries to act like he knows it all but he really doesn't. You aren't all that different from him in that matter - just two kids trying to figure shit out.

Sometimes you think it would be easy to pity him, easy to wax red for this human who hides behind shades and a facade. When he's really vulnerable and your chest twists in an awkward pain that you can't place, you wonder if you should break off the kismesis relationship and try to repair the damage done, to shoot for red. But then he acts like he wants you to hate him, he wants you to retaliate in a hateful sort of fashion. So you do, and the cycle continues.

He hates you, and you hate him.

That's all there is to it.

You like the physical touch aspect of it all, you enjoy feeling needed, wanted, desired. When you scrape down his skin and he arches into the touch, it crosses your mind that he trusts you. He trusts you enough not to hurt him too badly, just as every kismesis should, but at the same time, the thought makes you pause. He takes the chance to flip you over, gaining the upper hand.

You don't fight back, because you're caught up enough in your own thoughts, and the feeling of his lips against yours is distracting. Then he stops, and he speaks.

_I love you._

You sputter out your reply after an immeasurable amount of time, hardly doing anything other than feeling your stomach flip and your thinkpan freeze and your bloodpusher stop. It's a lackluster demand, and he starts talking again, a long line of words that you can't fathom. Fuck, you can barely think as it is. What he's saying registers long after he's said it, and you're still frozen where you sit. When he waits, you do nothing. When he stands up to leave and does so, your gaze trails after. 

How dare he say all of that to you? How dare he mess this up, this perfectly good blackrom? How dare he even say that you hate him? You do, you hate him so much it makes your fists clench, your eyes squeeze shut. You feel the tears prick behind your eyelids and you bite them back. You won't cry over Dave Strider.

He's a prick. (Truth.)

He's a liar. (No, he's not, you remind yourself in the back of your head.)

He's a hopeless moron. (Also truth.)

When your thoughts screech to a halt and you hear your pulse pounding in your ears from the bitter silence, you realize that he is hopeless and a prick and a moron and so much more. He's all of these things and you pity him for it.

You pity him.

You pity him because of these things. You pity him because he tried so hard to hate you. He hid his real feelings toward you for so long just to be near and have some of your attention. Yes, he lied - but he lied to love you.

You shiver and pull your legs up to yourself at that, resting your head on your knees and breathing deep. Did you ever really hate him? You don't know. Sometimes, you do. But being aware of all of this now, you don't think you can hate him again - if you even did in the first place. Somehow you think that you've been deluding yourself.

It takes you a moment to think of where he might be, and then you get up and straighten your shirt, anxious as you are. The only place he would go now is his respiteblock, and you head there immediately, lingering outside the door with an anxious expression as your pulse pounds in your ears. It takes you a good twenty minutes at least before you work up the nerve, and through all of it you're trying so hard not to turn tail and abscond the fuck out of there.

You finally knock: once, twice, three times.You stand motionless until you hear the muffled sounds of him walking to the door. He opens it and looks at you, surprise showing on his features for a split second before he starts to close the door when he realizes you aren't going to say anything. It's not that you don't want to say anything - you just can't. 

You shove your foot in the space between the closing door and the wall, spitting out a curse as pain shoots up your leg. Dave pulls it open again, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. You ignore the hurt to stare up at him, eyes wide, mouth dry. Your face is flushed by now with the words that you wish you could say to him.

But you can't breathe, you can't speak.

You're choking on nothing and your chest feels like its coming undone, knowing what he went through for so long. Would he reciprocate now, even though you said nothing to him after he confessed? You can't waste time thinking about that, not now. You want to be with him, even through the disgust you feel for your past actions now. You want to be ill with that thriving, sick with wanting, and addicted to needing. You want him.

So you throw your arms around him and press your lips to his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap.


End file.
